


The Dog

by Lise



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - Martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 06:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three short snippets from Sandor's life. Last minute Treat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dog

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Devilc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/gifts).



He wanted to die.

All his waking hours he spent screaming as though he would die, and all his sleeping hours were dizzy, sickening nightmares, senseless and full of fear and pain. The maester came every day to apply the salve to his face, and Sandor tried to fight him, but was always too weak, and when he wasn't the maester brought another man to hold his arms.

The first thing he did upon rising was to shatter the mirror with his fist. The glass didn't hurt that much, and he never wanted to see his own face again.

"Your sister's dead," they told him, when they asked for her, and he felt his fists ball up, remembered her yelling, somewhere in a fevered haze. His heart stilled and went cold. He had no illusions; she had died for defending him.

The fire had burned all his illusions utterly away.

**

Sandor didn't spend much time at home.

Unfortunately, neither did the ones Sandor thought of as his brother's rats.

Standing on a hill overlooking some forest and leaning against the tree at its peak, he'd been looking for a little bit of peace, or at least a little bit of quiet. Gregor was looking to kill someone and Sandor wasn't about to let it be him.

He looked down at the sword in his hand. It was streaked with blood and gore, and looking down his boots were covered as well. Only after examining them, blankly, did he look at the body next to him.

Willem wasn't a great man, or a bad one, but he was vicious enough that Gregor liked him. The sword was his. He'd come up here to kill Sandor, but he'd been too drunk to fight.

It had taken three tries to separate his head from his neck, and the man was screaming the whole time.

Sandor closed both hands around the hilt of the sword and drove it through Willem's chest and into the ground. Then he picked up the head by the hair, shook the excess blood and dirt off it, and started to lope home.

Maybe Gregor would get the point now and stop sending idiots to kill him.

**

He stopped at an inn after fleeing from King's Landing. That was what it was, fleeing. He didn't care anymore. Gregor could come and drag him out of here and Sandor wouldn't have cared. Nothing seemed to matter.

He drank three cups of wine fast before slowing down, if only barely.

Gregor. What if he went to Harrenhal and tried to finish his brother? Nothing else to do, now. What was he waiting for?

Sandor didn't feel suicidal enough yet. He kept drinking.

One of the serving girls had red hair, and he grabbed her arm, trying not to cry again as he looked at her. "I'm sorry," he said, blurrily. "I'm sorry. Sing for me again?"

The innkeeper threw him out, though gingerly, and fearfully. "Perhaps somewhere else, ser," he said, tentatively, and Sandor had tried to snarl. "Don't call me ser," but the door was already closed in his face.

Sandor slept in a ditch and dreamed of fire. He woke with tears on his face and a warhorse lipping his nose. He half turned east, toward Harrenhal, and stopped. Turned north, toward the Wall.

Nowhere to go.

Nothing seemed to matter because nothing _did_ matter. But he didn't want to hang.

He rode north, because thinking of his brother, he was still a frightened child cowering in a corner. He could steal and plunder and intimidate his way north to the Wall if he had to. Perhaps there they would have him without questions. If not, he could kill them and keep on going north.

The fire still burned green when he closed his eyes. He planned to make it several miles that day, but only made it as far as the next inn.

He checked for redheads before he started drinking, and wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed that there wasn't one.


End file.
